


brighter once amidst the host

by Siria



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 08:10:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Night Vale didn't reward those who hoped in the permanence of gravity—but Carlos didn't think it necessarily punished those who hoped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	brighter once amidst the host

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Cate for audiencing!

A year in Night Vale had taught Carlos to abandon assumptions. He'd pried open clocks to find them filled with teeth and hair embedded in lumps of grey ooze, he'd seen a horde of rabid tumbleweeds devour a drive-through dry cleaners, and he'd almost been killed by the tiny yet determined inhabitants of a subterranean city. On the first Thursday of every month, gravity loosened its grasp just enough that the schoolchildren could go down Main Street in great, bounding packs whose leaps took them to the tops of buildings. Night Vale didn't reward those who hoped in the permanence of gravity—but Carlos didn't think it necessarily punished those who hoped. 

And all that was in just a year—Cecil had lived here his whole life, except when he'd gone to college. Surely for Cecil, this would be nothing—a bonus, even. 

Yet when Carlos shrugged off his shirt, Cecil gasped and was quiet. Cecil was quiet, Cecil for whom speaking about Carlos in Homeric epithets seemed as autonomic an act as breathing. Carlos's stomach lurched. "Cecil?"

"Oh," Cecil breathed. He was very still; he held his arms stiff by his side but his fingers trembled. "You're an _abomination_."

Carlos flinched, picked his shirt back up and started buttoning again with fingers that were strangely uncooperative. When he'd first heard the rumours about Night Vale, when he'd come here and started seeing all these things that had no explanation with the scientific method, he'd wondered if finally, finally he'd fit in, if he'd get an explanation—but even here, it seemed, scientists were not born with wings. 

"Carlos?" Cecil said. He sounded confused. "Where are you going?"

"Back to my apartment," Carlos bit out. 

"But why?" Cecil said, taking a quick step forward and then rocking back on his heels, uncertainty written in every line of his face. "I thought—was it something I did? Did you not like that thing I did with my tongue? Because I—"

Carlos stared at him, pausing with his shirt buttons half done up. "You called me an abomination, Cecil."

Cecil's look of utter confusion seemed genuine. "But you are one, Carlos. What other word comes close to describing a Nephilim?" 

"Excuse me?" 

Cecil came closer, pushed the shirt back off Carlos's shoulders and carefully, so very carefully, ran his fingertips along Carlos's wings. Carlos couldn't remember anyone ever touching his wings that carefully before, that reverently—even his mother had seemed fearful of them, and his last boyfriend had wanted to dissect him. Cecil, however, looked at them with what Carlos was starting to realise was awe. "There are very few people with wings, you know. It's what happens when the daughters of men lie down with the angels—well, really mostly with Erika, but you know what Erika's like. Erika gets around."

Carlos blinked at him. "You're saying that I'm the offspring of an angel?"

"Well what else would you be, wonderful Carlos?" Cecil's fingers ruffled the pinions, skirted along the sea-glass-and-gold edges of the feathers, making Carlos shiver. "Though I should say, judging from the wingspan and the fact that you haven't rended anyone limb from limb while in the throes of a terrible and ferocious blood lust, that you're actually the grandson of an angel. Or maybe there was adoption and osmosis, you know how those things can happen. Isn't genetics such a _fascinating_ subject? Always so much to learn!"

"I... yes," Carlos said, thinking of all the times he'd asked his mother to tell him something about his father, and the blank look she'd only ever given him in return. After a whole year of waiting and looking and hoping that Night Vale would give him an answer, it seemed that he'd only ever had to ask the voice of Night Vale after all. "I'm part angel?" he said again. 

Carlos nodded. "Though I'm sure one of the Erikas could help you figure out which parts exactly."

"Maybe I'll ask them later," Carlos said, putting his hands on Cecil's hips, thumbs rubbing circles into the smooth, brown skin there. 

"Neat!" Cecil said. He beamed up at Carlos, his fingers still buried in Carlos's wings, and this was what bemused Carlos still, intrigued him, terrified him—that Cecil could look at him and say 'abomination' and mean 'perfection'; that Cecil seemed to accept with absolute equanimity all the parts of himself that Carlos had always feared most. "We could go over this evening? I mean, I promised Old Woman Josie that I'd help her clip coupons and stockpile more rock salt anyway." 

"Later," Carlos said, tugging Cecil closer so that they were flush against one another, so that Carlos could kiss him until Cecil was making satisfied noises against his mouth—so that Carlos could fold his wings around them both, whispering and warm, and leave just enough room for hope.


End file.
